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The KIT spin-off Kinemic GmbH is developing a software for keying and device interaction based on steering gestures for industrial applications.

Dr Christoph Amma set off to become an entrepreneur with his doctoral thesis at the Chair of Cognitive Systems in Informatics at KIT: “While I was doing my doctorate, I explored options for recognising and interpreting human movements, especially gesture and handprint character recognition. Ultimately, this was to result in ‘airwriting’, a system enabling letters to be written and recognised in the air without a keying or input device. Texts are thus captured solely by movements of the hand.

Inventor Amma caused a sensation with this invention. His academic work earned him a number of distinctions, including the “Google Faculty Research Award” in 2013. Technical implementation was supported by Marcus Georgi, a fellow informatics scientist at KIT. The positive acclaim the two scientists have met with and the growing interest taken in airwriting have encouraged them to go on pursuing the development of the research results towards concrete applications. Thus the decision to go into business suggested itself. “Progressing from scientific proof to application at client level really is exciting,” Amma remarks. “You have to do a lot of developing to get your own vision put into practice.” Tomt Lenz, a fellow KIT graduate who joined the team, adds: “Thanks to my previous activities as a business consultant, I was able to provide valuable experience in company development.”

What is already standard in desktop computers and laptops is increasingly applied in the area of embedded systems, such as telecommunication devices, automotive electronics or industrial control systems: Processors of two or more processor cores for higher speed and enhanced computing power. The higher performance of multi-core processors compared to single-core processors is only reached, if the tasks are distributed appropriately to several processor cores in an efficient and problem-free manner. So far, such a parallelization has been accomplished manually: This is very time-consuming, cost intensive and requires special programming knowledge.

A team of scientists of from the KIT Institute for Information Processing Technology (ITIV) headed by Professor Jürgen Becker started to look for solutions to simplify parallelization of multi-core processors already in 2011. Within the framework of the EU project “Algorithm Parallelization for Multi-core Architectures“ (ALMA), the scientists, in cooperation with industry partners, developed an innovative programming environment. The computer scientists and electrical engineers Dr.-Ing. Timo Stripf, Michael Rückauer and Oliver Oey were part of this research team. Based on the software tool developed in ALMA, they decided to start their own company. “About 40 person-years had been spent for the development. When the project was completed, we decided to start a company to make the technology available for the industry,” Timo Stripf explains.

KIT’s Spinoff cubuslab GmbH Offers Manufacture-independent Plug&Play Solution for Automatic Readout and Processing of Laboratory Data in Research and Industry

Many tasks in everyday life and at work are executed with digital support that facilitates life and accelerates workflows. Information technology and automation have become integral parts of these activities. But still, laboratory workplaces exist, where experiments have to be documented and evaluated manually. Reasons may be the variety of manufacturers, devices, and company-specific software, which are not compatible with each other and, hence, aggravate digital networking.

Dr. Dominic Lütjohann knows this problem from own experience in the chemical research sector. At public research institutions in particular, financial means are lacking to equip laboratories with latest information technology. During his Ph.D. phase with Professor Stefan Bräse at the KIT Institute of Toxicology and Genetics (ITG), the bioinformatician therefore started to develop a flexible and affordable solution for laboratory automation. After having defined this purpose of business, he developed the basic idea of a networked laboratory for worldwide exchange of research data in science together with Dr. Nicole Jung. Lütjohann was aware of his idea having even more potential and being suitable for laboratory management.Continue reading →

corvolution GmbH, a KIT spinoff, offers a sensor system for 48-h health checkups. Its use in industrial health management contributes to improved health of personnel.

Health is widely known to be man‘s greatest asset. This applies not only to private health but also to health in the working environment. Healthy and capable staff members are the most important resource of a successful company. In times of rising workloads, prevention and health maintenance are therefore topics of increasing importance. This upward trend was recognized by Dr. Silvester Fuhrhop, Dr. Malte Kirst, and Dr. Stefan Lamparth some time ago; while working on their doctoral theses at the KIT Institute for Information Processing Technology (ITIV), the authors intensively worked on non-invasive diagnostic tools in cardiology and movement monitoring. Continue reading →

For nearly twenty years, Professor Dr. Eric Gottwald has conducted research at the KIT to find out how cells can be cultured in three dimensions. Cell culture experiments are important especially in biological and pharmaceutical research and in biotechnology.

Prof. Dr. Eric Gottwald, one of the founders of 300MICRONS. The screens in the backround show pictures of 3D cell cultures.

Unlike 2D culture vessels, such as the flat Petri dishes, 3D culture systems guarantee a more organotypical growth of cells. As a consequence, results can be transferred more effectively to the human organism. The technology of manufacturing these systems is based on work of the co-founders Dr. Stefan Giselbrecht and Dr. Roman Truckenmüller, two former KIT staff members.

The idea to found a company was hedged by the team well over fifteen years ago. “However, at that time, there was demonstrably no market whatsoever. We were pioneers in our technology,” explains biologist Gottwald. Thus, the team first used a patented manufacturing technique to make a product for research purposes of their own. However, for a couple of years the trend in fundamental research and in industrial use has been in favor of 3D culture systems. In 2014, the three scientists therefore made another attempt at setting up a company. The young company, 300MICRONS, initially employed machines developed in house and a lot of manual work. In this way, 300MICRONS was able to generate its first revenue even before the official establishment of the company. Continue reading →